This Local Family Wants to Cook You Dinner

On a sweltering afternoon in early July, Jason Santos leads us on a tour of his Burlington home. The kitchen pantry looks like a mini-grocery store with different sections for different cuisines. “One of everything” grows in the bountiful outdoor garden. (He listed 39 different fruits and vegetables as he showed us around.)

There’s even a beehive where, last year, 50,000 bees made 50 lbs of honey. A pellet smoker and a Big Green Egg grill sit alongside the inflatable pink kiddie pool and wooden playhouse where daughter Teagan pumps her legs on the swing.

Without a doubt, this is the home of a chef.

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And this fall, Santos, who you may recognize from TV shows like Hell’s Kitchen and Bar Rescue, is rooting himself in the community the way only a chef can: by delivering an unforgettable dining experience for his neighbors.

Santos moved to town in 2023 with wife Thuy and daughter Teagan and says he’s never going to leave. Although he grew up locally in Melrose, Santos didn’t spend time here as a kid. “Melrose, Malden, Medford – those were the cities I knew,” he said. But, when the family was looking for a forever home, Burlington checked all the boxes: a good school system, a central location to family and work, and a newly-constructed home. “The more I live here, the more I love it.”

The last several years have seen Santos open a number of restaurants in the Boston area, including Buttermilk & Bourbon, which serves a fresh take on New Orleans cuisine, and the coastal Mexican restaurant Citrus & Salt, whose second location is set to open this fall in the former Osteria Nino location on Burlington’s 3rd Ave.

Santos said it just made sense to open a restaurant here. “I’m super invested in [Burlington],” said Santos. ”We work here, my daughter goes to school here, we live here. So I feel this extra amount of passion for it.”

Santos says he knew little about Mexican cuisine before developing the Citrus & Salt concept. “I just knew it was missing,” he said. He traveled to Oaxaca and Mexico City to learn about local flavors and techniques, bringing that knowledge home to create something brand new.

“I go out of my way not to give you what you think you’re gonna get,” said Santos. On the menu you’ll find a Mexican shellfish platter with oysters, homemade chamoy and michelada, a 4-lb bone-in pork carnitas, and scratch-crafted drinks that use striking preparations like homemade cantaloupe puree, liquid nitrogen, and the vivid butterfly pea flower.

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Santos has seen the restaurant industry change over his three decades in the business. “Anyone cooking for themselves is going to fail,” he said. “You have to cook for the people and give them what they want.” And, he said, people today want an experience. “When we put your food or a drink down, if you don’t take out your camera, we’ve failed.” He said he hopes that guests visiting for the vibrant pink, “blingy” atmosphere stay for the food and service. There will also be kid-specific offerings in recognition of Burlington’s family-oriented demographic.

The Santos family also plans to offer interactive opportunities for guests. Thuy envisions the function space offering everything from “Mimosas & Moms” mornings to book clubs. They’ll also have cooking and drink making classes, demos, and possibly even nightlife options. “I have so many ideas,” she said. “We are so excited to get more involved in the community.”

What little downtime Santos has is often spent in his own kitchen. “He can’t go small,” said Thuy, recalling a time when they were dating. “I was in grad school, and he asked if he could make pasta while I was studying.” Thuy agreed, expecting a fifteen-minute task involving boiling pasta from a box and heating up sauce from a jar. “An hour and a half later I go downstairs and he’s hand-rolling pasta!” More recently, a “quick dinner” turned into trips to three different stores and cooking up an entire octopus.

Partly, Santos said, cooking at home helps him stay creative. His home kitchen is also where, with help from in-house critics Thuy and Teagan, he develops recipes for his cookbooks, the latest of which – also named Citrus & Salt – was released this March. The book, Santos’s third, contains authentic-yet-Americanized Mexican food and drink recipes like bacon cheeseburger empanadas, Nashville hot chicken tacos, bacon-wrapped Sonoran dogs, and horchata ice cream.

Four-year-old Teagan has developed her own affinity for cooking and has all the makings of a future chef, including a hat and apron and her very own kid-friendly knife set. She scrambles her own eggs each morning, said Thuy, and won’t let them go to the skillet without proper seasoning. And she’ll eat anything, going as far as ordering branzino from a restaurant in Italy and finishing the entire plate.

Santos said he’ll support Teagan doing whatever she loves when she grows up, but at the same time he knows what a difficult life it can be. “I worked for a lot of years for not the nicest people,” he said, “and I always said, ‘I’m never going to be like that.’”

As Citrus & Salt prepares to open this fall, the Santos family is thinking about how the restaurant can help them become more connected to the community. “It’s not just a place you go out to eat. It’s a place you come to because we’ve built that camaraderie and family.”